Into The West recap

We’re back with another weekly blog post, this time talking about last week's Into the West tournament. I’ll be breaking down some of the highs and lows of my 7 games, and what I learned from them.

First of what was Into the West? And what list did I take? So Into the West is a yearly MESBG tournament run by the lovely Matt King in Cardiff. In previous years it has gained more and more traction culminating in this year’s whopping 100+ Attendees. The tournament covers 2 days and scenarios are picked from the match play guide, however, there's a twist! You also get given bonus objectives that you pick 3 of and your opponent selects one at random to determine which one you will be aiming for. It’s a nice side bonus that potentially can net you more tournament points.

With that out of the way, what did I decide to take this year? So the points value was set at 450 and have had previous success with my faithful iron hills I decided to take them this year. The list was as follows:

Dain – with boar

6 Iron Hills Warriors with Spear

1 Iron Hills Warrior with Banner and Spear

3 Iron Hills Crossbows

1 Iron hills goat rider

Bifur champion of Erebor

5 Iron Hills Warriors with Spear

Total Models: 18

So not too bad as you can see I opted to ally them in with champions of Erebor to get Bifur's leading another Warband. He was a nice choice as points-wise Bifur is cheaper than an Iron Hills Captain and has the special rule of head-butting his opponent to potentially call free heroic moves. The drawback with him is that Bifur removes the Iron hills army bonus, which I believe is one of the best in the game. The bonus allows for Dain to have a 4+ Master of Battle and +1 or -1 to maelstrom deployment. I decided to go the Bifur route as it was a way to run the dwarves most efficiently I could think of. So that’s the list, how did I do?

The first game was against a lovely chap called Jai, he was rocking Assault on helms deep. This legendary legion is a known tournament winner and I had heard of Jai's reputation of being not only a quality player but a lovely guy as well. Both were true of course as and Jai battled it out to see who could get whose relic first. Jai had a Balista which meant he had the range advantage along with 8 Uruk-hai crossbows. So I had to spend 2 might to get Dain and the boys as close to the Uruks as fast as possible. The ballista did thin my ranks but once combat began the dwarves did work! Dain did his bit but soon lost his boar and it was downhill from there, unfortunately. Losing priorities and roll-offs sealed my demise and before I knew thanks to the cheeky flank from Jais Uruk-hai the Isengard boys had won it!

After that, it pretty much was lost after loss for the day. We made some comebacks on the last game before we finished in the evening but I cut my losses and decided to focus on performing much better on day 2.

This then leads me to day 2, which started much better! The scenario was fog of war and I was facing another Isengard faction, only this time it was the legendary legion of Ugluks scouts. The scenario was fog of war. Both I and my opponent had to pick a terrain peace in our opponent's half and have more models than them near it. On top of this, we also had to select a hero in our opponent's army that was not their leader and kill them. I selected Mauhur as he had no strikes and low was only defence 5. If Dain got into him, he would surely die. The lovely thing at the start of the game was two crossbows taking a fate point off two of my opponent's heroes. In the end, the game ended in a victory but unfortunately, Bifur failed his courage to flee the board and gave my opponent more Vp's despite my winning.

The rest of the final day I had another loss and victory ending the weekend with 3 wins and 4 losses. not too great but even despite this I had a lot of fun and the bonus objectives we picked throughout the weekend gained me some additional tournament standing points. Aside from the games I met a lot of lovely people who complimented the paint job of my army and even said that I inspired them to do their snow bases the same way as me. There's nothing better than hearing that from a fellow hobbyist. 

In conclusion, I had a lovely time and despite not doing as well as I had hoped I made some good memories and this has only encouraged me to return next year and perform much better!